Titan: Part 3 – SPOILERS

[Ian Symes]

Welcome to the spoiler-laden discussion thread for Red Dwarf: Titan Part 3: Bo-Stad.

This is a place for no-holds-barred, detailed, nitty-gritty opinions and theories on everything in the third part of the book. Please try and avoid referencing anything from beyond this part, so that people can visit each thread as they complete each section of the book. And if you haven’t yet read Part 3, get out of here immediately.

Your comments may be used in the DwarfCast Book Club at a future date, so if your point is related to a specific sub-chapter, do mark it clearly.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

 

Topic

[Warbodog]

Wow, a fascinating if bizarrely short part. Random thoughts/theories:

– The break for shippers was sweet. Rimmer’s making quite the unintended impression on his unintended crush as she did on him, teasing a relationship that would inevitably be fucked-up, but still less so than his McGruder liaison.

– Is “Meneer” some kind of garbled clue, like “tomorrow” was “to Moreau”? Or just foreign?

– It seems Randy Hollister’s some kind of sleeper agent he/they’ve primed with this false or replica childhood memory during his stays for the purpose of accessing his top secret Holly channel. Or maybe he’s in on it and corrupt, but I hope not.

– I had to read the Rimmer/Raymond bit again to get that it’s an extremely fresh photo of their latest ill-fated replacement in the act. I originally thought it was saying that some version of Rimmer had been in one of the old photos all along, making things unnecessarily confusing for myself.

[Dave]

I had to read the Rimmer/Raymond bit again to get that it’s an extremely fresh photo of their latest ill-fated replacement in the act. I originally thought it was saying that some version of Rimmer had been in one of the old photos all along, making things unnecessarily confusing for myself.

This did throw me at first too.

[tombow]

Meener is sir/boss is Dutch/Afrikaans (according to google)

[Warbodog]

Ahh, okay!

Thinking more about it, I may be overcomplicating Hollister’s involvement too. More likely they found the image in his mind and built it so they can use it too.

[tombow]

maybe I was reading too quickly but I didn’t really get why Rimmer was famously wanted? The stuff he’s meant to have done didn’t seem severe enough to make him a top criminal on Titan. Unless it was because Pyle was after him and she could alert the media, or because he was a RD crew member.

[Dax101]

I assume it was just Pyle that was after him. And she had authority. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Ok that’s 4 comments across two threads where I’ve seen different people referred to Byle as Pyle … are people making the same error or has the print book got different versions already with a changed character name?

It’s Ingrid Byle

[Warbodog]

[Dave]

Ok that’s 4 comments across two threads where I’ve seen different people referred to Byle as Pyle … are people making the same error or has the print book got different versions already with a changed character name?

It should be Byle or the pun of her name doesn’t work.

[Warbodog]

Maybe it’s audiobook listeners not visualising the spelling as much. The same thing’s happening with Carzon.

[loadoftottnumb]

A short but gripping part. After part 2 I thought things were dragging a bit but we are right back on course now, looking forward to part 4. 

[Warbodog]

It was the same trajectory for me.

[Asclepius]

Rimmer as Raymond? Yes, I liked this. And Curzon as the agent. This worked.

“maybe I was reading too quickly but I didn’t really get why Rimmer was famously wanted? The stuff he’s meant to have done didn’t seem severe enough to make him a top criminal on Titan.”

Agreed. People being murdered and mutilated all the time, and Rimmer is wanted for…what? Jaywalking? I can’t remember what else.

[clem]

Chapter 2

Not sure what’s going on here exactly but is this how we’re getting senile Holly in this book? (Oh OK, having finished part three I think probably Holly forgot what he meant to tell Hollister because the Meneer is hacking him or whatever.)

Chapter 3

Good bit of action and a nice intriguing cliffhanger with the giant door and light switch. Don’t know what’s going on here either. Kochanski is a borrower now or some shit.

Chapter 4

Well this is mental, and I like it. So the Meneer is using Hollister’s memories, or possibly implanting fake ones, in order to access Holly for some reason. Does the Meneer know about the whole converging realities thing and is just preventing Holly from telling Hollister about the chaos it’s causing on the ship? I’m almost certainly reading too much into the spaceships on the wallpaper being red, but that got me wondering whether there might be even more to this, like maybe Hollister’s whole life has been stage-managed and he was groomed to be captain of Red Dwarf ever since childhood. 

Chapter 5

Very much looking forward to Rimmer as the new Raymond. 

Chapter 6

It’s Duct Soup minus Kryten!

[sleepey]

Is it too mean to say I’m glad I don’t have the audiobook because I can just skim over all the “list of things” jokes

[Author]

Replies